Washington's Wise Men?

Oikophobia and the Democrats' religion problem.

"How Democrats gave up on religious voters" is an answer to a question somebody is asking, and that somebody is Tiffany Stanley, a reporter-researcher at The New Republic. In an essay published just in time for Christmas, Stanley ponders the unmet promise of the man who promised hope:

When Barack Obama burst onto the national scene at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, he represented--among many things--the shining hope for the religious left. Here was a liberal politician who was not afraid of the language of faith, who just might reclaim territory that the Democratic Party had, willingly or not, ceded to Republicans. Red America did not own religion, Obama declared: "We worship an awesome God in the blue states."

Stanley laments the Democratic Party's failed "courtship of religious voters." Although Obama "won more churchgoers than any Democratic presidential candidate since Bill Clinton," after his election his party made the mistake of "significantly scaling back its faith-outreach programs." Here is how she describes those "programs":

The post-2004 revival of Democratic faith outreach, which reached its apex in the 2008 elections, can be traced to 2005, when House Democrats began holding a series of closed-door meetings. The gatherings, known as the Faith Working Group, were the brainchild of Nancy Pelosi, who wanted Democrats to start paying attention to religious voters. John Kerry had just lost the election and had seemed markedly uncomfortable talking about faith. (Though a Catholic, Kerry lost the Catholic vote to Bush, an evangelical Methodist.)

More than two dozen congressmen regularly attended the sessions, or sent aides on their behalf. (Barack Obama, then a junior senator, even sent a representative.) Attendees saw presentations on getting out the "God vote"--reaching voters motivated by their religious affiliation--and met with mega-church pastors as well as leaders from the religious left. The aim was simple: to formulate a sincere expression of progressive faith.

Hmm, a bunch of consultants advising a bunch of politicians on how to formulate sincerity. Not exactly the Three Wise Men, is it? Yet to hear Stanley tell it, it worked. Color us skeptical. It appears to us that Stanley has committed a fallacy of exclusion, explaining Democrats' recent electoral successes in terms of the subject she is examining while ignoring factors that were far more significant, such as GOP foul-ups and differences in the quality of the candidates.

ENLARGE

To focus on the latter, it should surprise no one that Obama "won more churchgoers than any Democratic presidential candidate since Bill Clinton." As the only successful Democratic presidential candidate since Bill Clinton, he won more voters of just about any other description, too. Yet according to 2008 exit polls, John McCain, whose overall vote total was less than 46%, won majorities of white Protestants (65%), white Catholics (52%), white evangelical or born-again Christians (74%), and churchgoers of any race or denomination who attend weekly or more often (55%).

Or consider Stanley's observation that John Kerry "seemed markedly uncomfortable talking about faith." Wouldn't that sentence be equally true without the last three words?

To be sure, it probably didn't hurt Obama to say things like, "We worship an awesome God in the blue states," although hardly anybody realized at the time was that he was speaking in the first person. (OK, that was a cheap shot. But a bargain!) Even so, our guess is that the Democrats' problem with religious voters is, in the economist's sense of the word, a secular trend.

What accounts for it? Consider this Gallup poll finding, released the day before Stanley's article was published:

Four in 10 Americans, slightly fewer today than in years past, believe God created humans in their present form about 10,000 years ago. Thirty-eight percent believe God guided a process by which humans developed over millions of years from less advanced life forms, while 16%, up slightly from years past, believe humans developed over millions of years, without God's involvement. . . .

The significantly higher percentage of Republicans who choose a creationist view of human origins reflects in part the strong relationship between religion and politics in contemporary America. Republicans are significantly more likely to attend church weekly than are others, and, as noted, Americans who attend church weekly are most likely to select the creationist alternative for the origin of humans.

This merely describes the trend. What may help explain it is the reaction of liberal Democrats. Here's MSNBC host Chris Matthews, quoted by NewsBusters.org:

In a new Gallup poll, 40 percent of Americans say they believe in strict creationism, that humans were created by God within the last 10,000 years, as in the Bible.

Well, how do you explain all those dinosaur bones, I ask? How do you explain your oldest living relative, our oldest living relative? Don't you love Lucy?! No surprise, that number is higher among Republicans, by the way. How high? Fifty-two percent!

A majority of Republicans, more than half the Republicans reject the science behind evolution. Fifty-two percent, tonight's Big Number.

Think about that one during the [2012 presidential] primaries.

This column will not defend "strict creationism" as an empirical hypothesis, though we rather like Lee Harris's take on the subject in "The Next American Civil War":

We desperately need to retain a large chunk of the population who will adamantly refuse to believe anything that they don't understand for themselves. Far better for children to reject Darwin's theory of evolution because they can't believe we came from monkeys than to teach them to repeat the theory by rote as if we were descended from parrots.

Even if you don't agree with Harris, there is certainly no reason to hold those who adhere to a common and harmless religious belief in contempt. That obnoxious and politically counterproductive attitude is a prime example of oikophobia.

Many on the left believe that "the average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to a serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat." The source of that quote (for which we owe a hat tip to Peter Berkowitz) is "The Promise of American Life" by Herbert Croly.

That book was published in 1911. Three years later, Croly founded The New Republic, where Tiffany Stanley now works. His observation of nearly a century ago was a sincere expression of progressive faith. That's the problem.

Totenberg Joins Christmas Alliance Christmas has enlisted a surprising ally in the war on itself, the Washington Post reports. NPR's Nina Totenberg got a lot of attention for her comment on "Inside Washington" that "I was at--forgive the expression--a Christmas party at the Department of Justice." Here's her explanation, from the Post:

We reached Totenberg herself during her "Christmas vacation" (her term) in Jamaica. Turns out her critics got it completely wrong: She was, she says, defending Christmas. The DOJ celebration was officially dubbed a "holiday" party, and she was gently mocking that generic designation. "I think that's kind of silly because it's obviously a Christmas party," she told us. "I was tweaking the Department of Justice. It was a touch of irony at the expense of the Justice department, not at the expense of Christmas."

So Totenberg is a member of the Christmas Alliance, while Attorney General Eric Holder belongs to the Axis of Winter. Which puts him on the same side as XmasIsEvil.com, a British website that enumerates the "fruits of Christmas" (quoting verbatim, with some punctuation added for clarity):

On the 1st day of christmas my true love gave to me an S....T....D. On the 2nd day debt. On the 3rd rape. On the 4th tennage [sic] pregnancy. Followed By An Abortion, Raves, Claiming God Has A Son, Blasphemy, Exploitation, Promiscuity, Night Clubs, Crime, Paedophilia, Paganism, Domestic Violence, Homelessness, Alcohol, Drugs...

Oh yeah? Well you're as cuddly as a cactus, you're as charming as an eel, Mr. Grinch! London's Daily Mail explains that the website, and also a poster campaign, are the brainchild of "fanatics from a banned Islamic hate group" called Islam4UK. "They hope the campaign will help 'destroy Christmas' in this country and lead to Britons converting to Islam instead."

Or as Generic Eric would put it, they hope to destroy a holiday and convert people to radicalism.

They're Watching John Brennan, President Obama's top counterterrorism adviser, is defending Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who has come in for much mockery for being caught short when ABC-TV's Diane Sawyer asked him about the arrests in Britain of 12 terror suspects. The Washington Post reports:

"Should he have been briefed by his staff on those arrests? Yes," Brennan said. "And I know there was breathless attention by the media about these arrests, and it was constantly on the news networks. I'm glad that Jim Clapper is not sitting in front of the TV 24 hours a day and monitoring what's coming out of the media."

We're glad too, we guess. But c'mon, the question was about a terror plot, not the latest episode of "Dancing With the Stars" or "The Office."

Further, Brennan sells Clapper and his staff short. Less than 20 minutes after we published yesterday's column poking fun at Clapper, we received an email from his spokeswoman. In our experience, then, the DNI staff is highly alert in monitoring what's coming out of the media.

"The fact of the matter is, I haven't persuaded the Republican Party. I haven't persuaded Mitch McConnell and I haven't persuaded John Boehner. And if I can't persuade them, then I've got to look at what is the best thing to do, given that reality, for the American people and for jobs."--President Obama, explaining his tax compromise, Dec. 7

"One thing I hope people have seen during this lame duck--I am persistent. I am persistent. If I believe in something strongly, I stay on it. And I believe strongly in this."--President Obama on the Dream Act, Dec. 22

Our Fearless Adversarial Press Corps "You racked up a lot of wins in the last few weeks that a lot of people thought would be difficult to come by. Are you ready to call yourself the 'comeback kid'? And also, as you look ahead to 2011, are you worried that bipartisan agreement will be a lot harder to reach on issues like deficit reduction and maybe even tax reform?"--Reuters reporter Caren Bohan to President Obama, Dec. 22, quoted by NewsBusters.org

I am writing out of concern, because you may have to move from the North Pole due to the dramatic melting of Arctic sea ice. The Navy's chief oceanographer says that by the summer of 2020 the North Pole may not have summer ice and other scientists project that an ice-free Arctic is possible as soon as 2012!

It continues in that vein, but you get the idea. Does global warming exist? It exists as certainly as Santa Claus.

Wannabe Pundits "Now that the rich, aided by their loyal apparatchiks in Congress, have secured another round of tax relief for themselves the question naturally arises regarding how they will spend their fresh loot, which we the taxpayers are so wisely borrowing from our BFFs, the Chinese," writes Paul Reidlinger of the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Don't even ask what "BFF" stands for, but in case you're wondering about the bottom line of Redlinger's piece, here it is: Capannina is "a wonderful Italian restaurant" where rich people are spending their money "prudently--even wisely!"

So it's a food review. He's serving the rich by helping them figure out where to eat. For a minute there, we thought it was a cookbook.

Zero-Tolerance Watch "A 13-year-old boy was arrested Friday for using a permanent marker while in class at his Oklahoma City middle school, a violation of an obscure city ordinance," TheSmokingGun.com reports:

According to an Oklahoma City Police Department report, the boy was spotted "in possession of a permanent marker" by Roosevelt Middle School teacher DeLynn Woodside. The 50-year-old educator told cop Miguel Campos that the student was "writing on a piece of paper, which caused it to bleed over onto the desk."

Woodside, pictured at right, reported that the child, whose name was redacted by police from the report, attempted to hide the marker when she asked him for it. Strangely, Woodside's Facebook page reveals that her "likes and interests" include the official "Sharpie Permanent Markers" page on Facebook.

Out on a Limb "We're in the midst of one of those Washington moments. A few weeks ago, pundits were stating en masse that Obama was a political nincompoop destined for the dustbin of history reserved for one-term presidents. Now, the same pundits are hailing him as the 'comeback kid,' a genius statesman outwitting his pygmy opponents. Well, we'll see."--Toby Harnden, Daily Telegraph website (London), Dec. 22

Racism Is Not Dead "In Snowy Syracuse, a December That's Whiter Than Usual"--headline, New York Times, Dec. 23

The Lonely Lives of Scientists "Scientists Rail Against Senator Who Belittled Research: Researchers Say Federal Funds Went to Project More Important Than Just 'Cow Burps.' "--headline, ABCNews.com, Dec. 23

"Obama the Great--if He Does Say So Himself"--headline, Washington Post, Dec. 23

All Cats Are Gray in the Dark Via the Middle East Media Research Institute, al-Jazeera brings us yet another shocking revelation of war crimes at Guantanamo Bay. Former detainee Walid Muhammad Hajj tells the Qatar-based network of the shocking methods employed by the facility's Jewish interrogators:

Interviewer: Did they ever use witchcraft on you?

Hajj: There was one attempt.

Interviewer: How did they do it?

Hajj: Once, when I was sleeping--on the floor, not on a bed--I suddenly felt that a cat was trying to penetrate me. It tried to penetrate me again and again. I recited the [Quran's] kursi verse again and again until the cat left.

Interviewer: But there wasn't really any cat there?

Hajj: Absolutely not.

That's because John Kerry* has the cat to this day.

* The haughty, French-looking former junior senator from Massachusetts, who by the way served in Vietnam.

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